The world is in a strange state right now. Here in Pennsylvania and just to the north of us in New York and in other states, the government has closed down all non-essential businesses and issued other restrictions for the time being. New York even has travel restrictions starting tonight. People are expected to stay home and practice “social distancing” and “self-isolation.” Apparently a lot people don’t know what to do with themselves when they can’t be social. From what I’ve been reading, it seems that many of them spend the day binge watching shows or doing other things on the internet. Many report that they are bored and going stir crazy. [the term stir crazy has an interesting origin - “stir” in 19th Century England was a slang word for a prison, so it describes a sort of prison induced insanity.] I don’t have that problem. I can always find things to do at home to keep me sane. And if I’m not working on some project in the house or the garden, I prefer to read.
I ordered some books about Florida from the library two weeks ago – part of my ongoing obsession with the state since my visit there. Most of them are nonfiction books about the ecosystems of the cypress swamps and everglades. One is a classic novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek, an autobiographical story set in rural Florida in the 1930's. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s next on the list. The one I just finished reading was an odd choice, Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank – a science fiction novel written in 1959. It is set in rural Florida and tells the story of a group of survivors of a worldwide nuclear war and how they cope when all the modern conveniences go away. I’ve read a lot of science fiction over the years, but I’d never heard of this book even though it is apparently considered a sci-fi classic. Perhaps because of the strange situation we are in presently with this pandemic, I couldn’t put it down. The world seems to have shifted into an uncomfortable form of survival mode. The best and worst of people and society are increasingly on display. Alas, Babylon addresses these things in a riveting way.
When I was a teenager and devouring science fiction novels, I read a book called Earth Abides by George R. Stewart in which he explores what happens to the planet and civilization after a plague destroys most of the human race. The book impressed me enough that I still think about it now and then. Last week I tried to order it through the library, but they didn’t have it and the libraries are all closed right now anyway, so I bought a cheap used copy online. It will arrive in a few days. I wonder if it will be as good as I remember.
It must be our reaction to the current Zeitgeist, but Miriam and I also watched some plague movies last week – Contagion, Outbreak, Carriers, and World War Z. It’s as if watching those horrible scenarios has helped keep our present situation in tighter perspective. Things really aren’t that bad for us. It is a kind of count-your-blessings-because-things-could-be-worse therapy.
We have not felt the effects of social distancing very keenly here at our house. I guess we were never very social to begin with. With school closed, I have a lot of time to do things at home. The library is closed and that’s an inconvenience for checking out books, but it also means I have plenty of time to read the stack of books I already have without worrying about overdue fines. Restaurants are closed, but we don’t eat out. Our theater is closed and we do go to the movies a lot, but we have other ways of entertaining ourselves at home. Stacey still goes to work from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. The family she works for needs her no matter what is going on in the larger world. The mail still arrives as it should. The UPS man still delivers the things we order online – which is our main means of purchasing things anyway. I see pictures of the great cities of the world with empty streets and think how peaceful it must be. The streets here in Gold (there are three of them – Route 49, Route 449, and the Rapley Road) are usually pretty empty anyway. When we were in Italy last year I kept saying how nice it would be to be in those famous places without the mobs of tourists crowding everything. Now the mobs are gone, but no one can enjoy it.
The biggest impact all of this is having on our household is that because school is closed for at least another week (but I suspect it will go longer), we’ve had to tighten our budget a little. We did some initial purchases as things began to close down and we will be fine as far as food, clothing, and shelter goes, but anything extra will have to be trimmed for the time being. Only essential traveling. No more seed or plant or garden supply purchases. It’s okay. We have what we need and that is enough.
I’m glad I ordered seeds back when I did. My seed orders arrived last week. I have the seed packets organized in the order in which they will be started – from ten weeks before the last frost all the way down to two weeks before the last frost. Our last frost (in a good year) usually comes at the end of May. We are already at the ten week mark, so I’ve started some seeds – celery, parsley, and flowers like columbine and snapdragons. I’m watching every day for the first thrilling sprouts to emerge. I still have plants and trees that I ordered, but they aren’t supposed to come until April.
Thursday was the Vernal Equinox, so it is now officially spring. The weather has been typical of early spring – changeable. It’s cool and rainy one day, warmish and sunny the next, and then cold and snowy. It was 12° when I got up this morning, not very vernal. I was hoping that we were done with snow, but I know that won’t happen. Winter will attempt a coup with snow expected tonight, tomorrow, and again later in the week. By the end of the week it will be warmer and springtime will resume. The crocuses are at their best right now. I hope they survive the snow that’s coming.
I ordered some books about Florida from the library two weeks ago – part of my ongoing obsession with the state since my visit there. Most of them are nonfiction books about the ecosystems of the cypress swamps and everglades. One is a classic novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek, an autobiographical story set in rural Florida in the 1930's. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s next on the list. The one I just finished reading was an odd choice, Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank – a science fiction novel written in 1959. It is set in rural Florida and tells the story of a group of survivors of a worldwide nuclear war and how they cope when all the modern conveniences go away. I’ve read a lot of science fiction over the years, but I’d never heard of this book even though it is apparently considered a sci-fi classic. Perhaps because of the strange situation we are in presently with this pandemic, I couldn’t put it down. The world seems to have shifted into an uncomfortable form of survival mode. The best and worst of people and society are increasingly on display. Alas, Babylon addresses these things in a riveting way.
When I was a teenager and devouring science fiction novels, I read a book called Earth Abides by George R. Stewart in which he explores what happens to the planet and civilization after a plague destroys most of the human race. The book impressed me enough that I still think about it now and then. Last week I tried to order it through the library, but they didn’t have it and the libraries are all closed right now anyway, so I bought a cheap used copy online. It will arrive in a few days. I wonder if it will be as good as I remember.
It must be our reaction to the current Zeitgeist, but Miriam and I also watched some plague movies last week – Contagion, Outbreak, Carriers, and World War Z. It’s as if watching those horrible scenarios has helped keep our present situation in tighter perspective. Things really aren’t that bad for us. It is a kind of count-your-blessings-because-things-could-be-worse therapy.
We have not felt the effects of social distancing very keenly here at our house. I guess we were never very social to begin with. With school closed, I have a lot of time to do things at home. The library is closed and that’s an inconvenience for checking out books, but it also means I have plenty of time to read the stack of books I already have without worrying about overdue fines. Restaurants are closed, but we don’t eat out. Our theater is closed and we do go to the movies a lot, but we have other ways of entertaining ourselves at home. Stacey still goes to work from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. The family she works for needs her no matter what is going on in the larger world. The mail still arrives as it should. The UPS man still delivers the things we order online – which is our main means of purchasing things anyway. I see pictures of the great cities of the world with empty streets and think how peaceful it must be. The streets here in Gold (there are three of them – Route 49, Route 449, and the Rapley Road) are usually pretty empty anyway. When we were in Italy last year I kept saying how nice it would be to be in those famous places without the mobs of tourists crowding everything. Now the mobs are gone, but no one can enjoy it.
The biggest impact all of this is having on our household is that because school is closed for at least another week (but I suspect it will go longer), we’ve had to tighten our budget a little. We did some initial purchases as things began to close down and we will be fine as far as food, clothing, and shelter goes, but anything extra will have to be trimmed for the time being. Only essential traveling. No more seed or plant or garden supply purchases. It’s okay. We have what we need and that is enough.
I’m glad I ordered seeds back when I did. My seed orders arrived last week. I have the seed packets organized in the order in which they will be started – from ten weeks before the last frost all the way down to two weeks before the last frost. Our last frost (in a good year) usually comes at the end of May. We are already at the ten week mark, so I’ve started some seeds – celery, parsley, and flowers like columbine and snapdragons. I’m watching every day for the first thrilling sprouts to emerge. I still have plants and trees that I ordered, but they aren’t supposed to come until April.
Thursday was the Vernal Equinox, so it is now officially spring. The weather has been typical of early spring – changeable. It’s cool and rainy one day, warmish and sunny the next, and then cold and snowy. It was 12° when I got up this morning, not very vernal. I was hoping that we were done with snow, but I know that won’t happen. Winter will attempt a coup with snow expected tonight, tomorrow, and again later in the week. By the end of the week it will be warmer and springtime will resume. The crocuses are at their best right now. I hope they survive the snow that’s coming.
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| One of my crocus patches. |
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| And another. |
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| My two favorite crocus colors. |
I celebrated the equinox by working in the barn. For two days I cleaned the upper part, swept out all the cobwebs and vacuumed up all the mess that the sparrows make. On Friday, Miriam joined me and helped me put up new barriers to try and keep the sparrows out. There’s no way to keep them out of the lower coop, but I think we’ve blocked them from coming up into the upper part. We’ll see how successful we were.
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| The upper barn cleaned and tidy. |
While I was cleaning in the barn, I had to move the old empty beehives that I have stored there. When I stopped keeping bees a few years ago, I gave my active hives to an Amish friend, but I kept two of my empty hives. I don’t know why. I’ll never be able to keep bees again. When I moved those hives to clean around them on Thursday, their smell made me so sad. It is a rich aroma of honey and wax and cedar wood (the hives are made of cedar wood). I loved keeping bees and harvesting my own honey. I’m sorry the bees didn’t love me. Now we have to buy our honey and it is expensive. At least I don’t have to worry about getting stung.
I was all set to downsize my flock of chickens. I have twenty hens and two roosters right now, down from forty back when the flock was largest a few years ago. My older hens are dying off and I was not going to replace them. We are getting eight to ten eggs a day, which is more than enough for us. But after reading Alas, Babylon and looking at other sources, I can see that in times of turmoil, chickens and eggs are a hot commodity. Eggs are very nutritious and a good bartering item. And if things get really tough we can always eat some of the chickens. So, despite our ban on extra purchases, I decided to get more chicks. Miriam and I went up to the Tractor Supply in Wellsville on Friday and we bought a dozen chicks – six Americaunas and six Copper Marans. Having new chicks is exciting, but it also means more work. It’s much harder to take care of chicks than it is mature birds. They require some fussing to keep them alive. We put them in a big cardboard box inside the middle part of the coop with a heat lamp on them. They have their own feed and water. Now I’m committed to caring for them for at least two months before I can merge them into the flock. I didn’t really want to deal with that this year, but I had a feeling that I should. So here we go.
I was all set to downsize my flock of chickens. I have twenty hens and two roosters right now, down from forty back when the flock was largest a few years ago. My older hens are dying off and I was not going to replace them. We are getting eight to ten eggs a day, which is more than enough for us. But after reading Alas, Babylon and looking at other sources, I can see that in times of turmoil, chickens and eggs are a hot commodity. Eggs are very nutritious and a good bartering item. And if things get really tough we can always eat some of the chickens. So, despite our ban on extra purchases, I decided to get more chicks. Miriam and I went up to the Tractor Supply in Wellsville on Friday and we bought a dozen chicks – six Americaunas and six Copper Marans. Having new chicks is exciting, but it also means more work. It’s much harder to take care of chicks than it is mature birds. They require some fussing to keep them alive. We put them in a big cardboard box inside the middle part of the coop with a heat lamp on them. They have their own feed and water. Now I’m committed to caring for them for at least two months before I can merge them into the flock. I didn’t really want to deal with that this year, but I had a feeling that I should. So here we go.
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| Chicks in their box from the store. |
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| In their box in the barn. |
Yesterday was the birthday of my favorite composer, Johann Sebastian Bach. He was born in Eisenach, Germany on March 21, 1685 and died in Leipzig on July 28, 1750. He died at the age of 65, which seems young to us, but was a respectable age in his time. During his lifetime he composed over a thousand pieces of music, almost every one of them a masterpiece. He is considered by most to be the greatest composer in human history. The Encyclopedia Britannica says this is because “Appearing at a propitious moment in the history of music, Bach was able to survey and bring together the principal styles, forms, and national traditions that had developed during preceding generations and, by virtue of his synthesis, enrich them all.” I just say it was because he was a genius. I have a large collection of recordings of his music (but not all of it by any means), so to celebrate his birthday, I listened to some of it during the day – the Brandenburg Concertos, The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Concertos for Violin and Orchestra, and the Harpsichord Concertos. If I tried to listen to all of the recordings of his music that I have, it would take me over 300 hours. At Easter I will listen to my favorite of his works, the Saint Matthew Passion. I love everything about his music, the complexity, the melodiousness, the polyphony, the sheer beauty of it. My spirit responds to it. I hope to meet Bach someday. I want to thank him for the gift of his music. I can’t think of anything I would want during a time of self-isolation (for music) than Bach.
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| J. S. Bach |
I’m growing more accustomed to our homebound Sabbaths. This morning we had a Branch Presidency meeting via the telephone. Then at 10:00 our friends the Dunns and Nancy Jones arrived for our sacrament meeting. We sang and prayed had the sacrament and discussed our Sunday School lesson. We have great discussions. I could get used to this. Geoffrey and his family and Rachel and her family also report having great experiences with home church.
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| Hazel giving a talk today in her white gloves and pearls. |
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| Home church at Geoffrey and Joni's house. |
Now I look to the week ahead and wonder what new things will happen to us all. We already have restrictions on work and travel. Who knows what else might happen? Weather wise it will be unsettled. But I’ll work on indoor things on the inclement days and outdoor things when I can. I’ve been doing a lot of family history research when I can’t be outside. And when I can be outside, I’m glad there are no restrictions on working in the garden. I hope you are safe and healthy and coping well.
